Maybe. I am bothered that there's an unofficial pre-election in the US that is called campaign financing. It skews candidates towards the wealthy, corporate backed, or populist. If elections were publicly financed somehow, then perhaps we'd see a more representative selection. At least they wouldn't be beholden to donors as often.
Yes, yes. Rules seem cumbersome. But access to the public makes a candidate more successful, and that costs money. Therefore those with the most money should be the most successful, to the point that policital pundits will report on dollars raised as an indication of campaign success.
The counterintuitive solution is to get rid of campaign finance restrictions.
If money is easier to get, candidates will need to "pay" less for it in favors.
To understand the dynamics here, the key fact is that additional money only helps a campaign up until it has enough to get its message to the voters. More money after that doesn't impact the result.
Political parties and their representatives stopped trying to only get their message to voters a long time ago. Today they want to target - and preferably close to drown - each person with the sequence of messages, video clips, social media reactions, and sound bites that are most likely to get you to vote for them, based on as much data as possible, and oftentimes both using and abusing every cognitive weakness we humans tend to have.
This is almost indistinguishable from what used to be called propaganda, and generally seen as somewhat problematic even before it was inundated with individual targeting and the ungodly amount of realpolitik we see today.
This is not a game where there is ever enough money, and it can work terrifyingly good, almost no matter what agenda you push, as long as the agenda is all that you care about.
Sure it might come tumbling down one day, if the lies becomes to obvious. The damage will still have been done at that point.
If history has taught us anything, it seem to be more of the opposite of what you claim.
What I said wasn't my opinion, it's the consensus from the research that's been done on this.
Anyone who lived through the 2010 California governors race could also see Brown being outspent 5:1, and win easily.
There is a correlation/causation illusion here: The (A) winner in votes usually also has the (B) biggest donation to the campaign. Can you see the two main reasons why A causes B, and not the reverse?
How about we instead consider distancing the human political actors from direct contact with temptation? Corruption is an integral part of all political systems and ultimately festers until inevitable failure and restart. Can’t we start to consider open source, programmatic execution of popularly derived decisions?
I have quite the oppossite approach- if corruption is so unavoidable, why not instituionalize it? The economic sector gets 25 % of the votes in parliament. Companys can boost the percentage of there representive in this fixed part, by paying taxes (in secret). If there are 25 company representives, and every company pays 1 billion - they get each get 1% of the economic-sector-power to distribute.
Corruption outside of this fixed percentage is heavy penalized, as in life prison sentences.
If we know that corruption varies a lot between states (as in countries) and, worldwide, has reduced over time, why would we think it's inevitable?
I see a lot of estimating-as-inevitable in many problem areas - for example: the environment, race and sex relations, security / "privacy". I'm not sure whether it has increased, or I'm just more aware of it these days.
When we think that a problem is inevitable, we may conclude that various reponses that otherwise have little to recommend them might be a good thing: populisms, zero-sum thinking, authoritarianism, radical transparency. This idea of inevitability is in conflict with optimism in David Deutsch's sense: optimism as the principle that all problems are caused by lack of knowledge (and therefore that all problems are either solvable, or truly inevitable because of some law of physics - no examples of the latter being known).
No trying to be optimistic here- but the fact is that with the nightwatch state- alot of corruption simply ceased to be because the rule of law evaporated- making corruption effectively legal behaviour. Germany, the place where i live is incredible corrupt, but most of it is legal behaviour, thus not showing up in your statistics.
Nothing in your scheme prevents corruption outside its designated lines any more than what we have already. So I have a counter-proposal: why don't we just skip the legitimization step and move straight to the life sentences?
Its basically a free market for power- and in a market for power, nobody trust one another- so game theory tells us, everyone will try to make secret agreements, and then go all in to get the most out of it.
And if all that lobbying money piled up , goes into the organized corruption, there is little left for the rest of the power percentage.
Maybe you could say "technically, the case invalidated restrictions on campaign related advertising by third parties, so-called soft money. Though this may be commonly referred to as campaign finance, strictly speaking, that's not correct." I think very few non-lawyers would say the case "had nothing to do with" campaign finance.
The specific provision at issue in Citizens United was part of the campaign finance laws for the same reason the Patriot Act is called what it is. But it had nothing to do with financing of campaigns. It involved speech prohibitions on corporations and labor unions unrelated to campaigns.
The issue the heart of Citizens United v. FEC (i.e., the Federal Elections Commission) was whether a non-profit's funding of a TV special criticizing a candidate violated the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
I guess it's technically true that the decision doesn't allow more money to flow directly to the campaign, and there's not /supposed/ to be coordination with campaigns either (wink wink, nudge nudge), but it's very obvious that CU increased the flow and role of money in elections.
> The issue the heart of Citizens United v. FEC (i.e., the Federal Elections Commission) was whether a non-profit's funding of a TV special criticizing a candidate violated the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
In ordinary parlance, do we say “Apple funds iOS” or do we say “Apple makes iOS?” In Citizens United the non-profit produced and sought to air a movie called Hillary: the Movie. They didn’t “fund” any candidate’s political campaign.
> I guess it's technically true that the decision doesn't allow more money to flow directly to the campaign
By “technically true” you mean “true.” “Campaign finance” laws presumably have to do with financing of campaigns. The “role of money in elections” is a different, much broader area, much of it outside the scope of campaign finance laws. (For example, consider the alleged $5 billion in free advertising the press gave Trump. Do campaign finance laws allow the government to regulate that?)
One can imagine lumping in scenarios where someone is attempting to bypass a campaign finance restriction by directing a third party to produce content for the campaign. But that’s not what Citizens United involved either. There was no allegation of any such “indirect” campaign financing. Instead, the government tried a naked power grab: punishing a non-profit for making a political movie, with no showing of any link to the campaign beyond that.
I'm not sure that many people draw the distinction you're trying to make. Kennedy's opinion itself describes the outcome of Citizens United in terms of campaign finance reform:
Virtually every bit of media coverage describes it in similar terms too. Still, it was a 5-4 case that produced five opinions, so if that's the hair you want to split, so be it. I think my original comment stands just as well if it's amended to "Aren't we trying that already? Citizens United already dramatically relaxed ELECTION SPENDING rules."
Citizens United v. FEC invalidated laws beyond the specifics of the case. I think your argument is a pedantic one. I'm not a lawyer, but I follow politics more closely than probably 98% of Americans and I've commonly understood Citizens United to be related to what most Americans and the press refer to as "campaign finance", which is more broad than the strict definition you're using.
CU is listed in a Wikipedia section titled "Campaign finance in the United States":
I like this idea, but I think that the biggest risk would be in the legal assistants needed to navigate the sea of bureaucracy that legislative work usually needs.
The lottery-selected citizens would come and go, but the assistant would probably remain in office for several “elections”. The selected citizens would probably be oblivious to what’s currently going on and the assistants would have incentives to influence those overwhelmed citizens to the assistant’s own agenda.
That's a common argument against term limits: by shifting the burden of institutional memory even farther away from the elected officials, you're further empowering the bureaucrats.
It also further empowers the lobbyists, which adds to the risks. A government full of ignorant people will tend to fall back on those who seem to know what they're talking about.
While the Athenians were true about giving real power to everyone (rather than a facade of power in the form of vote every 4 years) , only the citizens who were male had the privilege. Non citizens , women and slaves could not. Still, their model was more inclusive than democracy ( as most household had a chance, instead of 51% as is typical in democracy today).
Such an arrangement would lead to much-less-regulated societies, as people would be wary of weaponized legislation that can be used by their neighbor.
There is also something to be said about how contemporary democratic politics have been turned to emotional porn
You could also mix sortition with elections to minimize power plays, like the way they elected the Doge of Venice:
> New regulations for the elections of the doge introduced in 1268 remained in force until the end of the republic in 1797. Their intention was to minimize the influence of individual great families, and this was effected by a complex electoral machinery. Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, and the nine elected forty-five. These forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge.[19] Election required at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors.[20]
That Venetian scheme is interesting, but ultimately it reminds me of a non-cryptographer trying to roll their own secure random number generator. Thirty chosen by lot, then by lot reduced to nine? Eh? Just choose nine to start with.
Moreover (on the assumption that all the people chosen at each step are on the Council, which isn't clear) this looks like a system that will be absolutely rife with horsetrading and intrigue: "I'll vote for you on the eleven, as long as you (vote for P to the forty-one|support my housing bill|etc)". It may not be corruption from outside, but the intricate machinations of an in-group don't lend themselves to representative democracy either.
I've long thought this would be a great idea, although given the differences in communities it would probably make most sense to implement this at the state or even local level.
I do find it this statement odd:
> These assemblies are part of a wider conversation, and in this conversation, there should also be a place for social movements: the reasoned deliberation of disinterested citizens should not come at the cost of the voices of those who have stakes in the issues being debated. ... For example, the British environmental movement Extinction Rebellion lists a citizens’ assembly on climate and ecological justice as one of its demands.
People who want more democracy are often rather selective about what the legitimate scope of that democracy should be. Consistently less than 5% of voters believe that the environment/climate change is the most important issue facing the country: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp.... (By contrast over 20% say immigration.) Climate change, moreover, seems like one of those issues that affects everyone, rather than one of those issues--like say marriage quality or affirmative action--where certain individuals have particularly strong "stakes in the issues being debated." Such a broad policy choice--embodying fundamental trade-offs between present discomfort and future risk--would seem most appropriate for resolution by an impartial panel of randomly selected citizens.
If we had a more granular democratic say that was counted above and beyond a token X in a limited choice of option every 4-5 years with those options promises being no guarantee that what was on the tin is what you will get. Then maybe we would have more harmony and progress.
Imagine if you will that every voter had the ability to submit their idea's for other voters to support/debate and the top ones go onto being voted into policy. For some they could just vote upon the policey, if they choose, be their choise.
But that would take technology that was trusted. But then voting democratically is something that happens in so many countries, be great if there was an open/auditable standard of such a system that the people could get behind. Facebook and other social media is not that solution.
Today we have a token say periodically with those representatives being driven by media, that is in part driven equally by events and social media reaction to those events. It is messy, informal, rabble driven mess and that is what plays out in politics. Yes that needs to change, but it needs to change slowly to allow people to adjust or you will create just as much friction as you are trying to solve.
But for letting goverment being decided as a lottery, well - look at jury duty, that is how that works. You can find good examples of this as you can bad examples. So on average you could say that you would be no worse off. But the extreme's could potentially be larger. Let's face it, what are the odds of a lottery picking all KKK members as a government - they are not zero. That's all that needs to be said upon that idea.
Representation, referendum, initiative and lottery are all just different tools in the toolkit of democracy. They all have advantages and disadvantages, and ideally, they should be used as such.
So for example lottery is great if you want people who are good representation of common interest (i.e. not corrupt), but of course it suffers that these people might not be experts or interested in the problem. Lottery is probably the best for advisory or supervisory boards.
Interesting and was not aware of this (Being UK peon), glad that voting ballots have at least shown some form of expression beyond an X and embraced it. In the UK, anything than a single X in a box will void the ballot paper/vote.
EDIT [Autotype correction - embarrassed into embraced - opps]
The lottery system has several variants to take that in consideration.
In one of them, everybody votes for x (e.g: 3) people around them. Then you remove the top 10% to avoid people campaigning, and the bottom 10% to avoid psychopathic candidates.
The ones that remain can then register to the lottery.
In some variants, you have limits to the wealth you have, jobs you hold, geographic min and max, number of times you can try, etc.
The lottery concept is not about embracing chaos, but smoothing the odds, playing with the Gauss curve in our favor, limiting the network+money factor and avoiding turning politics into a job.
People already did elect the Nazi party and Hitler, multiple times. Someone needs to calculate the odds, but the probability of getting Kkk by chance is much lower
For this to work I think you would need enough representatives that different segments of the society would consistently have their concerns represented. However, I'm not sure that would be viable with a country as large and diverse as the US.
The lottery system would also likely work best when the representatives knew that they would be held accountable socially for their actions. However, that likely requires a more localized society, greater shared worldview, and less inequality that we currently have in America.
I could see a lottery system working at the state or local level. However, it seems like most of the issues that society is currently facing (climate change, inequality, etc.) are ones that can only be solved at a national level.
The article focuses on demographic representation and campaign reform. There are benefits to both of those, but to me the strongest argument in favor of sortition is that it cleans out the stable every few years. It seems like some government corruption comes from either being so secure in your position that you feel a sense of impunity, or else being so insecure in your position that you promise favors in exchange for later support. Knowing you'd only ever have one term in office, but not who your successor would be, would at least resolve those issues.
On the other hand, it might just push the corruption down the ladder, to the class of functionaries who stay in government as advisors for these people.
From 1268 the oligarcial Venetian republic used a multi-round system of elections and selections by lot to choose the Doge. Apparently that system actually had a lot going for it https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf , and the fact that it and the Venetian republic endured for over 500 years after 1268 seems to support that idea. So this is probably the sort of model the US should be seriously considering to reform its somewhat broken electoral/political system, and specifically how it appoints its chief executive. It's discouraging that instead the only systems which seem to have any support or awareness are fully direct election and the system of (weighted-but-otherwise-)effectively-direct election which is already in place.
If we do this, we'd be lead by whatever accidental majority gets in. And they have no incentive to do what the people want.
The only saving grace would be that people have more of a sense of duty, and thus are less likely to abuse their power. But beyond that any unlucky draw could really screw over a country.
What greater incentive do current voters have for picking the correct policy/representative? Either way, people with power are balancing their personal interest with justice / the public interest.
Voters don't, but politicians have incentive to listen to voters, rather than being totally in it for themselves.
In other words, the desire to be re-elected causes politicians to listen to the people, rather than do whatever they want. At least, that is the theory.
Sure, politicians might have to listen to voters, but if voters themselves are selfish then how does that help? Like, if we are worried about the hypothetical winners of the sortition lottery would legislate selfishly, shouldn't we worry just as much that normal voters will elect politicians who will pass legislation that furthers the voters' selfish interests?
If you aggregate the selfish interests of all voters, you get a better reflection of what society wants than if you average the selfish interests of 1000 people chosen at random.
Wouldn't the lack of accountability and long term involvement (ie: re-elections) simple mean that those chosen would have an incentive to funnel as much money to themselves and their friends as possible?
What a terrible idea. Being a representative isn't just about beliefs, it requires expertise in statecraft. There are so many better ways to solve the stated problem.
> Being a representative isn't just about beliefs, it requires expertise in statecraft.
I suspect you don't live in the United States - or have never watched these representatives in action in their various sessions and places of work, because ... elections are a beauty contest that are simply a reflection of a candidate's ability to campaign, and have nothing to do with the actual ability of the representative to capably do their job.
Usually they have some combination of law practice and/or past governing experience. Most presidential candidates were previously either in Congress or were a governor. Donald Trump being the obvious exception (and we've seen how his erratic and irrational policies have been going, with even members of his own party publicly balking at them). Here's hoping he isn't the start of a trend.
Random just means without reproducible information about inputs. There is nothing additionally equitable in deciding an outcome (more representation by favoured minority groups) and then calling the selection process “random.” Are airport screening selections random, or just opaque?
What the author is in effect advocating is an opaque process whose outcome reflects some desirable criteria. Presumably if one disagrees, it is because of some modern heresy, and articles like these are really about identifying reactionaries and other counter-revolutionary types who will not sustain cognitive dissonance for the cause. What can I say, I am provoked.
People mostly accept the results of a lottery draw, if the same system was used to pick politicians, then we all deep-down just know - people would question the results more and more. Indeed I'd expect headline reports that a Russian satalite was flying overhead when the draw took place and effected gravity and the results and they should be voided.
Just how society works.
But if you printed out a list of random numbers printed out upon a page of A4 and produced 10 pages. Then asked a group of people to pick which of the 10 pages is the most random. Well, the result would be enlightening into what random is and what individual perspective of random is.
I can see how some people like the idea of legitimizing irreproducible results, but they don’t bear scrutiny and it’s no way to transfer power. I also don’t think it is reasonable to dismiss someone who writes for the walrus, whose piece was edited by someone there, as an innumerate and naive lightweight. An agenda seems much more plausible.
(Not GP but) The composition of the body being one male and one female from each district plus two (presumably opposite gender) from Indigenous people and "adjusted for age" represent an element of opacity. What does "adjusted for age" mean? Am I less likely to be chosen if I'm in a particular age range (or particular age range crossed with district)? If a particular district is heavily skewed in gender (in either direction), should the representation be constrained to one of each gender?
That's a description of one particular experiment with sortition. I don't see the article proposing how, exactly, a random selection process should work at all.
I was referring to the popular vote. HRC won there but by such a small margin it was well within sampling error.
I think we should have a runoff in that case. Drop all the other candidates and have just HRC vs DT. Of course I'm also not a fan of the electoral college system.
It's the plot to P.K. Dick's first published novel "Solar Lottery".
> The operating principle was random selection: positions of public power were decided by a sophisticated lottery and when the magnetic lottery bottle twitched, anyone could become the absolute ruler of the world, the Quizmaster.
> But with the power came the game – the assassination game – which everyone could watch on TV. Would the new man be good enough to evade his chosen killer? Which made for fascinating and exciting viewing, compelling enough to distract the public’s attention while the Big Five industrial complexes ran the world. Then, in 2203, with the choice of a member of a maverick cult as Quizmaster, the system developed a little hitch…
Be careful what you wish for. Do you really want the policy to reflect popular polling? Really really? Because what the public supports is a mixed bag. Maybe the population will support higher healthcare spending but also greatly restricted immigration policy ... or leaving a beneficial trade-block due to fears of Eastern European immigrants. Contrast this to Switzerland, where we've seen popular anti-immigration measures being 'tweaked' by more level-headed politicians who realize there are larger issues at play.
There is something to be said about policies put forward by sophisticated and educated elites.
The "tweaking" that you refer to sounds exactly like British immigration policy in the decades preceding the EU referendum. It didn't solve anything, resentment just built up and eventually overflowed. And the end result is far more damaging than it would have been to just listen in the first place.
The problem is that the question was incoherent, just like the recent vote on weapons.
This question was asked in a vacuum, and didn't take into account that it was in direct contradiction with current laws/agreements.
Implementing the immigration law would most likely have meant exiting Schengen and a whole lot of EU things.
This should have been made explicit in the vote, not implicit.
I don't even understand how asking such a question is legal when one answer results in the law being incoherent.
I think this has a point, though the author's meaning is ambiguous.
To elaborate, if the Swiss govt directly implemented popular policy viewpoints, then fears of immigration could have brought about a Brexit type situation in a way similar to how the UK Government had a yes/no referendum that implemented the 'popular' policy of Brexit.
>There is something to be said about policies put forward by sophisticated and educated elites.
Sounds more like a meritocracy, but then politics has taught us that many labels can fit depending upon your initial position and posture in much the same way that idea's in the middle can from the left appear right-wing and equally upon the right, appear left-wing. Hence labeling and focusing upon those labels whilst ignoring the content - solves nothing.
Yeah, but we can’t even figure out how to have reliable elections without using paper ballots. I don’t think we are mature enough to have an unbiased merit-based selection of individuals to rule us all. Who sets the merit parameters? Who will test candidates?
Oh, I totally agree. I was just showing how things can have many labels and with that, effect how the content is interpreted with focus upon the label over the content.
In some ways we have a level of meritocracy in that we set a minimum level of IQ and ethical standard to be allowed to vote, prisoners don't vote (most countries I'm aware of at least, though I'm sure as with everything that exceptions exist). Just that some want to raise and add to those merits. Which would be sad and equally could be labeled a form of dictatorship and highlights again, how something is labeled, defines the direction of debate.
For me, a more engaged and granualar system of say is what is needed. Today we have a token X upon a limited selection, with no garantee's that those options can or will do what they said at the time you placed your token X, once every 4-5 years.
Voting is stuck in the medieval times, when it could take months to a bit of paper across the country and people could just about manage an X as their writing skills. Politics needs to evolve. But if I was to change one single thing, it would be to remove the party system myself. All representatives would be standing to represent who elected them and speak for them over party loyalty. That would see a fairer and more insightful democracy play out. But that would be a start. A more granular say is needed in our voting systems and that say needs to be more frequent.
Oh come on. If we start distorting commonly understood words and concepts, how can we possibly have a rational conversation? A benevolent dictatorship is not the same as a representative democracy.
>There is something to be said about policies put forward by sophisticated and educated elites.
Yeah, that they sell out to the highest bidder and are seeing revolts around the world as the middle & lower classes get decimated by their "educated elite" global policies. There is more to life than lifeless consumerism.
